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18 Reported Injured in Beirut Explosion Dozens Reported Injured in Beirut Explosion
(about 7 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A bomb exploded in a parking lot in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday morning, injuring at least 18 people, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency, and raising fears of increasing spillover from the war in neighboring Syria. BEIRUT, Lebanon — A car bomb tore through a parking lot in the heart of Hezbollah territory in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday morning, in a bold attack on Lebanon’s most powerful political and military player that increased fears that the spillover from the war in neighboring Syria was entering a dangerous new phase.
The explosion struck the district of Bir al-Abed, and was believed to be a car bomb, Lebanese media reported. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Some supporters of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant group and political party, angry at the worst attack in years in a neighborhood it tightly controls, blamed Lebanese or Syrian militants who back the Sunni-led Syrian uprising that Hezbollah opposes, sharpening concern that Syria was bringing sectarian conflict inside Lebanon.
The bombing came amid longstanding fears here that Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite Muslim militant group and political party, would face attacks in response to its increased military intervention in support of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, against the two-year uprising challenging his rule. The blast, in the Bir al-Abed district, injured 53 people, Lebanese officials said. No one was killed, though the parking lot was near a supermarket where people were shopping for food to break one of the first fasts of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
A particular worry has been that car bombs will strike the sprawling southern suburbs of Beirut, known collectively as the Dahiya, which means suburb in Arabic, where Hezbollah has its offices and many supporters. Some Syrian rebel commanders have threatened to attack Hezbollah there. Residents say Hezbollah has increased security in the area. The bombing aggravated longstanding fears here that Hezbollah or its supporters would face attacks in response to the group’s military intervention in Syria against the uprising that is challenging its longtime ally, President Bashar al-Assad. That conflict has deeply divided Lebanon and strained its fragile political balance, and Hezbollah’s involvement has left some of its supporters fearing reprisals and feeling ambivalent about fighting fellow Arab Muslims.
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of Parliament, warned against jumping to conclusions and noted that no particular figure appeared to have been targeted. The explosion took place in a supermarket parking lot, he said. The area is densely populated and a bomb placed on a busy street could have caused more casualties, raising the possibility that it was a calibrated attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the car bombing, and Lebanese leaders across the political spectrum scrambled to urge calm.
Another Hezbollah legislator, Ali Ammar, blamed “Israel and its agents.” Hezbollah has portrayed the Syrian uprising as a tool of Israel and the West and part of an effort to weaken Hezbollah, which depends on Mr. Assad’s government to provide a conduit for arms from Iran that allow it to confront Israel. A particular worry has been that car bombs would strike the sprawling southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has many offices and supporters. Some Syrian rebel commanders have threatened to attack Hezbollah there. Near the bomb site, shop owners said they were surprised because they had seen Hezbollah increase security in the area.
Tammam Salam, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, called for a meeting of political leaders todiscuss the bombing. As black smoke towered over streets hung with peach and turquoise paper lanterns to celebrate Ramadan, the fear was that Lebanese Sunni Muslim supporters of the Syrian uprising, or some of the nearly 600,000 Syrians who have fled to Lebanon, were involved.
Hezbollah fighters played a key role in helping the Syrian government retake control of the strategic town of Qusayr near the Lebanese border after more than a year of rebel control, and some Syrian rebels say Hezbollah forces have been aiding the Syrian military in a renewed attack on rebel strongholds in the nearby city of Homs. But Hezbollah officials made no such allegations. Instead, one of the party’s representatives in Parliament, Ali Ammar, blamed “Israel and its agents,” a line that many residents who poured into the streets quickly echoed.
Lebanon is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of Mr. Assad, and the pressures of the conflict in the neighboring country have strained Lebanon’s fragile political balance. Lebanese Sunni militants have long crossed the border to fight with the rebels, and tensions increased after Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters to Qusayr. Its fighters have also battled rebels in the suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian capital. So did Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Movement, the Sunni party that is Hezbollah’s main political rival and is often criticized by Hezbollah and its supporters for being too tolerant of Israel and too close to the West.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has urged Lebanese militants to keep the fighting inside Syria and not battle in Lebanon. But Hezbollah was accused last month of sending fighters to assist the Lebanese Army in clashes in the southern city of Sidon that drove out a radical Sunni cleric who had been a vocal critic of Hezbollah, using anti-Shiite sectarian slogans to denounce its intervention in Syria. Weeks earlier, a rocket attack struck the Chiyah area of the southern suburbs, injuring four people. The reason, said one Hezbollah supporter who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was contradicting Hezbollah officials, was to keep the peace.
In far-flung Beirut neighborhoods on Tuesday, the news of the explosion spread quickly, as people shared the news on their cellphones and anxiously discussed it in shared taxicabs. Photographs shared on social media showed people rushing into the streets near the scene of the explosion as dust and black smoke rose into the air. “It’s better to say it’s an Israeli act,” she said. “Who could control the street if Hezbollah accused the Syrian opposition? We would see massacres if this happened.”
Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said Israel was not involved. “This is essentially about a struggle between the Shiites and the Sunnis, also within Lebanon,” he said.
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah lawmaker, warned against hasty conclusions, saying no Hezbollah figure appeared to be the target of the bombing. It was possible, too, that the bombers chose not to place the bomb on a crowded street, or lacked the capacity for a larger one.
“It was a small message,” said Ali Suleiman, 45, sitting outside his shop near the bomb site, painstakingly winding copper wire to repair a generator. He blamed Israelis; asked about Syrians, he said, “the Syrians are Israelis.”
Some residents pointed fingers at followers of a provocative Sunni cleric, Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, who has regularly called on Sunnis to join the Syrian uprising and issued sectarian threats against Hezbollah. Mr. Assir and his followers were driven from his base in the southern city of Sidon two weeks ago during deadly clashes with the Lebanese Army; some accused Hezbollah of taking part in the battle.
The bombing prompted a chaotic reaction on streets that Hezbollah normally keeps orderly, even during protests. Near the parking lot, where the burned metal frames of half a dozen cars lay tangled, chants of support for Hezbollah suddenly erupted into angry boos as a car carrying Lebanon’s interior minister, Marwan Charbel, drove up.
People in the crowd accused him of tolerating Mr. Assir. As a crowd charged his vehicle, his bodyguards and Hezbollah fighters fired shots in the air to drive them back as the minister fled into a building. Youths gathered outside, chanting Shiite religious slogans; one even leveled an obscene taunt at a revered Sunni figure.
Nearby, the bomb had twisted the iron window frames of the Mirvay Patisserie, where chocolate muffins lay among sandlike piles of crumbled glass. A worker shoved them into the street, appearing to take out his anger with his broom. Watching him, Manar, 17, said: “We are young. We shouldn’t be thinking of battles, we should be thinking of other things.”
Qassem Nooreddin, 26, an architect, had rushed from his work site to the bomb site, still clutching building plans, to express solidarity. He suggested that Israel had orchestrated the attack to make the Syrian rebels look strong. He said Hezbollah’s leaders would work hard to contain rash reactions, but that hotheads posed a risk.
“Lebanon is a dismantled society,” he said. “The people are poor and illiterate, and they will follow anyone.”
Only Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, could maintain calm, he said.
Hezbollah, he said, “knows when to get involved and when not to, inside and outside Syria.”
Hours after the bombing, barricades were being cleared away and people were returning to their errands. “People are not scared,” Mr. Nooreddin said. “For the ones who fought Israeli rockets, this is just fireworks.”

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.